Converting a JPG to EPS, to allow printing using only black and red ink

Hi,
I'm having a book printed. The publisher noticed that almost all of the images in the book were .gif diagrams, containing only black and red color, so she wants to print the book using only two ink colors, black and Pantone 185C. In addition to the .gif's, there were about ten jpeg photographs, but even the photographs were almost all black and red. She had her image person convert the photographs into "duotone" .eps's, so that we could still use only two inks in printing the book. She said that we needed .eps's to make this work.

I don't like how the dutones came out. I'm hoping that someone can look at a .jpg photograph and the .eps that was made from the .jpg and identify what the problem is, and either suggest a better way to make the conversion, or let me know of another alternative.

The problem is with the red dots. It seems that the red color washes out the 3-D shading in the red dots. In the .jpg, you can see that the red dot is a conical depression in the domino, but in the .eps, it almost looks like a flat uniform red dot.

In the .eps, if you select the Pantone channel and decrease its "solidity," for example from 50 to 10, you can see more of the 3-D-ness of the dot, but of course there is less of the red, and it still doesn't come close to the pretty conical shading of the red dots in the .jpg.

Also, the .eps red dots have been made too large, and the black surface between two adjacent red dots is getting too thin. Of course, the white dots look fine in the .eps.

Boy, I hope I'm describing this satisfactorily.

Anyone have any ideas for me and my publisher's image guy? It just seems to me that there should be a way to use only two colors, but still get a much more realistic image!

Hmm. When I look at my color libraries, I have "Pantone Solid Coated" but I don't have "Pantone+ Solid Coated". I guess I can either wait and try to open your eps on my publisher's Photoshop, or maybe you could use the "non-+" version?

I think that, mostly, I need to open the .eps so that I can see what you did to create the .eps that preserved the shading so well!!

Okay, I could open that. But, and forgive me if I'm exposing too much naivete, there is only one channel. In the .eps that I uploaded, there are two channels, the "Gray" and the "Pantone." I think we need those two channels for the printer and his two inks, and it's something about creating the Pantone channel that didn't have the finesse to show the 3-D spot in the domino.

Hi it shouldn't matter what library you choose or have chosen to generate the red colour, as long as it is titled and named the same as any other reference to the pantone colour you want to use.

The colours could be CBC123 it wouldn't matter. The only difference between the two libraries is going to be (most likely) in the CMYK ink values or the L(ab) colour space value. These values won't affect two colour printing.

If the colour prints strangely, it is most likely the red values is outside of GAMUT or the printer driver doesn't deal well with the file format. Again this shouldn't matter with TWO colour printing.

As to the red you will see on screen this also shouldn't matter because your colour could be blue on screen but defined as red and print green at the print shop if the colour designation is incorrect. Get the print shop to show you a swatch and make sure that is the colour you want to use.

And here is a small modification that I made to Dan's .eps. All I did was to go to the Pantone channel, select the red dots, and cut out everything else, so there was no tint-y color in the rest of the black body of the dominoes, or in the white dots:http://app25.com/TheEPS_Dans_SteveMod.eps

The verdict: Dan's mod is about a million times better than my publisher's mod, even though it was just a "quick try." Dan, can you tell me the steps you used to create your .eps from my .jpg, so I can duplicate the steps myself for the rest of the .jpgs that I need to turn into .eps's, or teach my publisher's photoshop person how to do it?